The PBE has been updated! As we kick off the 8.6 PBE cycle, today's patch includes the newest ultimate skin Gun Goddess Miss Fortune, a new set of emotes, a few mysterious missions assets, & much more!

Continue reading for more information!

(Warning: PBE Content is tentative and subject to change - what you see below may not reflect what eventually gets pushed to live servers at the end of the cycle! Manage your expectations accordingly.)

"Sarah Fortune is a living weapon of mass destruction; a legendary bounty hunter seeking revenge among a galaxy of thieves. Shot and left for dead, she now pilots the deadliest combat exo-suit in known space—and she’ll stop at nothing to bring violent justice to her would-be killers.

Bullet Time

All-new models: Each exo-suit features unique textures and weapon models.

All-new animations: She strikes a unique Bullet Time pose per exo-suit.

All-new VFX: From black hole technology to devastating missiles, each exo-suit harnesses a unique power source.

All-new SFX: In addition to new VO lines (starring not just Gun Goddess Miss Fortune herself), each exo-suit sports different audio.

How She Works

During the game, you’ll have four different exo-suits to choose from—Scarlet Fair, Zero Hour, Starswarm, and Royal Arms. Whenever you’re at your fountain, a UI will pop up, and you’ll have the option to switch exo-suits to fit whatever mood you’re in.

Her Exo-suits

Scarlet Fair (Base): Built by Miss Fortune from her father’s blueprints, this highly-modified suit can fire a rotating barrage of bullets, antimatter tank shells, missiles, and antipersonnel flak discharges.

We always love hearing your feedback and feelings! All bug reports and thoughts help us make these skins even more awesome, so please keep 'em coming!

Thanks, cuties! <3"

New Summoner Icons

A total of five new Gun Goddess Miss Fortune summoner icons are now on the PBE, one for each of her suits included with skin purchase and one portrait icon included in her premium bundle. More info here.

New Emotes

Six new emotes have appeared in today's PBE Update.

New Ward Skin

Along with GGMF we also have the new Exo Ward skin, available exclusively in her premium bundle.

Harrier (Passive) "Auto-attacks that are already in-flight will now trigger and consume the Harrier mark"

Behind Enemy Lines (R)

Fixed a bug that would sometimes prevent Skystrike from firing

Skystrike now applies her Harrier mark to all enemy champions hit

Fixed a bug where Skystrike would deal double damage if fired by re-activating her R

Channeling no longer breaks when taking damage

Removed the in-combat state that would refresh R’s cooldown every time combat was entered

Taking damage from non-minions while channeling or while Behind Enemy Lines is active no longer breaks the channel or form. Instead, the movement speed bonus is removed for 2 seconds. Taking damage from minions no longer has any effect.

Fixed a bug causing Behind Enemy Lines to immediately end when used while attacking a turret

Fixed a bug that would cause movement orders to be removed or ignored while casting Behind Enemy Lines

Returning to the fountain now automatically casts Behind Enemy Lines if it has been learned

Guinsoo's Rage: Every other basic attack will trigger on hit effects an additional time."]

Locket of the Iron Solari
[Back for more testing!]

Unique Active changed from an aoe shield effect to to "After a brief delay, creates a protective field at your location for 8 seconds. Allied champions within the field are dealt 35% less damage (90 second cooldown)."

(new this iteration) Unique Active's Protective Field can now be placed rather than dropped at caster's feet.

"[EXPERIMENTAL] After 4 seconds in combat, your first attack against an enemy champion grants you 10 - 60 AD, based on level, for 4s and converts 20% of your damage to champions to True damage for the duration.

Melee Only: Damaging enemy champions refreshes this buff."

Manaflow Band (S2)

Cooldown lowered from 75s to 60s

Effect changed from "your next ability used has its mana or energy cost refunded, and restores 8% of your missing mana or energy" to "your next ability restores 10-40% of your missing mana or energy (based on level). If the ability hits another champion, permanently increase your mana by 15."

Context & Notes

1) When asked if we'll see skins other than GGMF this cycle, Stellari mentioned:

Changes:
Ferocity lockout AFTER using an empowered spell reduced to .1 from .25 for Q and E
Ferocity lockout AFTER using an empowered spell only applies on the slot you just cast

Adjusted Q's animation cast frame to make it feel less "sticky."

Bug fix:
Fixed a bug where gaining 4 ferocity from a leap Q while in the middle of E's cast time would cause Rengar to lose all ferocity without getting an empowered spell

Thoughts:

Trying to address some of the "stickyness" feels with Rengar Q. The animation makes it feel like you're stuck to your target after the Q hits and can't cancel the winddown. Adjusting the castframe of the animation to attempt to remedy this. If you have lower ping, please hop on PBE and let me know how it feels.

There were TWO ferocity lockouts, one on gaining ferocity and one on spending. 8.5 addresses the "on gain" lockout. This PBE should address the "on spend" lockout.
More changes will come once we get data for 8.5. If he's still too weak we'll be looking at more numbers adjustments.

"Hi folks, I’m AzuBK, a designer on the Live Gameplay team, and I’m here to deliver some context and goals for the LeBlanc work on PBE.

Thoughts on the Assassin Update

We made a slew of changes to LeBlanc’s kit in the Assassin update in the name of slowing down her time to kill, allowing her to be more tricky at the expense of burst damage. Looking back a year later, these changes ended up being a mixed bag. Some of the changes still make sense in retrospect, like removing E’s slow to give opponents a real chance to break tether range. Others began with an honorable goal but suffered in execution. Her new passive mark, for instance, was meant to backload her damage but made one of the core values of her kit—order of spellcasts—much less important ("spell order doesn’t matter, just wait for the mark").

Mini-revert goals

Enough looking back, though—let’s talk about our direction and goals with this project and how you can help. Our primary goals are to restore as much of pre-rework LeBlanc as possible while taking another stab at the assassin update’s goals of reducing frustration when playing against her. Like with any similar project, we won’t be able to give everyone what they want, but we’ve been testing and exploring internally for the last few weeks and have come up with a direction that we think we can all be happier with going forward.

Starting with the fun (and important) stuff:

Passive mark is gone and the old Sigil of Malice is back. We still believe that pre-rework LeBlanc's instant, ranged burst was too high, but making you stand around waiting for a mark isn’t a reasonable ask for players. We’re instead looking at more smoothly backloading her damage by emphasizing RQ and the second half of E/RE.

The old Mimic cast paradigm is back. Pressing two buttons to Mimic a spell introduced a painful delay, especially for a combo caster like LeBlanc. The pre-rework cast paradigm is also healthier for the game, as LeBlanc exposes herself to more risk by not having access to RW escapes regardless of her spell sequencing, so this is a win all around.

Feelings have been mixed on the global R-R clone. While it holds potential for some tricky outplays, the clone’s most effective uses are scouting and blocking skillshots, which don’t fit with the deceptive illusionist fantasy. So we're reverting the clone changes and bringing back Mirror Image. Mirror Image triggers at a moment that’s tense for both players involved (LeBlanc is about to die, and her opponent is about to land a kill), and provides both some guaranteed value and an opportunity to deceive and outplay.

We’ve also got a number of other tuning and mechanics changes, including:

RQ’s damage is more tilted towards the mark than the initial hit, whereas the base Q cast is evenly split. Q+R poke (inasmuch as that amount of damage can be called poke) was a constant problem before the rework, and we aren’t eager to jump back into the world where LeBlanc chunks opponents out without putting herself in danger. E and RE’s damage are similarly backloaded.

E tether is slightly easier to break. This change is aimed squarely at the playing against case—we want to give players a more realistic shot at breaking the tether, which frequently feels unfair on live (though again, to a lesser extent than when E used to slow). It’s especially important that this moment is reasonable for both sides given our intent to put more power into the root damage.

The lockout before snapping back with W is reduced. We aren’t planning to fully revert/remove the lockout for a few reasons listed below, but the delay doesn’t have to be as long as live in order to achieve our goals. We’re also going to count the delay from when the dash ends, rather than starts, so short dashes aren't as punished as they are on live (creating some of the standout worst-feeling cases.)

The main reason for the lockout lies in how opposing players are supposed to respond to Distortion. With its speed and lack of landing-position telegraphing, it’s not a skillshot that players are expected to dodge, and we're not trying to change that. The play is in whether LeBlanc is going to snap back and when, and we need time for that play to be meaningful. Opponents need a brief moment to recognize that she has arrived and take part in the mind game—it doesn’t need to be a long time—but that moment has to exist.

The no-lockout model biases toward pro play and low-ping environments. Even with no lockout, many players used the pre-rework W as if it had a short delay, because it had no buffering. Like other highly-ping-sensitive mechanics, perfect snap-back timing isn’t a LeBlanc skill we think is good for normal-vs-pro balance, so we’ll be investigating whether some gentle buffering makes sense here in order to even out that disparity.

On a simpler note—instant snapback, when executed very well, just isn’t readable for opponents or spectators. Lack of visual gameplay clarity isn’t the sort of deception we’re looking for.

Stay tuned for additional changes on the PBE as well. LeBlanc could ship as early as 8.6 if everything looks good, but might live on the PBE for a few cycles if she needs longer to get to a good spot. Feedback, especially on whether we’ve brought the fun parts of LeBlanc back or not, is welcome and appreciated. I can’t promise that everything will make it in, but, as always, your feedback will help guide the project moving forward.

Edit: Full current changelist below. There's some experimental stuff in here, so I wouldn't expect all of this to go live. Play it, think about it, and tell us what makes sense and what doesn't. I'll be around intermittently to answer questions.

[4] "This is a massive flattening of that curve, and I'm a little scared of runaway success games where you get a penta during a level 1 invade and transform at, like, 4 minutes. Maybe I'm scared for no reason!"

We've just finished working on 8.5 and are mapping out things we'll be looking at for 8.6. Some of our current thinking below, as usual stuff will get added or removed as patch development goes on.

Items:

Jungle items - Two potential changes. First is changing sustain so it's more missing health/mana based. Goal there is to make early ganks a bit riskier like they used to be a couple of seasons back (not ganking at or close to full health, so more chance of a turn around). Would also potentially help out those unable to clear at present because they're so mana limited. Second change is lowering early clear speed a bit as well, push first gank times back a bit later in the game again.

Abyssal Mask - Potentially pushing it more towards just tankier users. Magic damage dealers taking it to both nullify opponent lane damage and still get sufficient personal damage hasn't generally created good gameplay.

Duskblade - Nerfing it.

Locket - Some investigations into ways to make Locket less consistent and less universal a purchase. More exploratory, so possible nothing ships in 8.6.

Rageblade - Looking to make it more accessible to melee, potentially also less of a first item power spike and more tied to other item power.

Champions:

Rakan - Looking to buff. We're also fixing a bug between him and Xayah that leads to his performance with Xayah being much, much better than with anyone else. After that bug fix he'll be weaker when paired with Xayah, so a buff even in that case should be good too.

Rumble - Some form of buff, details TBD.

Lee Sin - Got hit a bit by Tracker's removal and had already been a bit weak before that. Buffing, details unsure.

LeBlanc - Changes will be on PBE during the 8.6 cycle from day 1, probably ship in a later patch though. Changes revert the majority of the previous update.

Ahri - Might have changes in 8.6 (testing, but not certain to ship). Still looking for ways to make her highs higher and her lows lower (does more when ahead, does less when behind)

Some Duskblade Users - We'll have some buffs to a number of champs who are pretty dependent on Duskblade at present and we expect will be too weak post Duskblade nerf.

Runes:

Manaflow Band - Nerfing, details TBD.

Presence of Mind - Looking to change it so it's a reasonable choice on a wider number of champions. Then probably nerfing it for its current best case users, on whom its very strong already."

6) ricklessaabandon noted that the second PBE update of this cycle would likely include the Ahri changes he's been discussing.

1st day of pbe - extremely large refactor of all of her scripts (intended to be identical to live ahri, but will want to see if anything is broken like skin vfx/sfx)

2nd day of pbe - first public iteration of gameplay changes"

[2] "in terms of what to expect on the gameplay side of things, we'll be trying things such as (re)moving the movement speed on Q, as well as giving her a bit more 'bite' on trades/all-ins expect things like base damages going down slightly, ap ratios going up a bit, etc"

[3] "essentially, since ahri should be able to lean on the current mage item pool a lot more for high-movement, sustained threat play patterns we'll be looking at trimming some of that power (but not synergies) from her kit and putting in more pick potential"